In front or behind? The mystery solved.

Everyone knows how they like their toilet paper to hang yet no one seems sure of how it is meant to be hung: with the end in front of the roll or behind it. Having spent a good deal of my life on the porcelain throne – or with my life tropologically in it – I have thought of the solution.

The contact point of the paper is the outside. If you’re given to buying loo rolls with line drawings on it, that’s the side you want facing out. Obvious enough; however, the key tissue issue is how (that is, if) you fold it. Hold a piece withe picture facing up. If you fold the outside edges backward, away from you (a ‘mountain fold’ is the origami term), the picture is on the outside and you’re right to go. If you fold the outside edges forward, toward you (a ‘valley fold’), the picture is in the middle and you have the rough end of the deal, as it were.

So if you’re a mountain folder then, generally speaking, it will be simpler to place the free end in front of the roll but if you prefer a valley fold, the free end hangs behind it.